6.75 years

Dear Baby Girl, Last week you were bucked off a horse, and seven days since does not allow me any further eloquence...

I can tell you this, though: there is/was a space between the time I realized what was happening and the time I was picking you up from the ground as you were gasping for air when I was changed.

In between the time I was trying to figure out if the horse was going to trample you and the time I was trying to figure out if you would be paralyzed--I leaped over a few lifetimes.

My love deepened in a way that is different from the eyelash winking increments that it grows for you each day. It plummeted to the depths of someone being thrown from a building. Of a six year-old being thrown off the horse.

In that space, in those seconds that felt like the worst nightmare looping in slow motion, my heart reaffirmed something. I'm not sure if the heart spoke any words but if it did, they would have sounded something like, "Mine. Beloved. Will fight."

Within moments of my picking you up, you proclaimed, "That is the last time I ride a wild horse! I am only riding Western from now on!" That was sort of snobby of you, but we all decided to forgive you, since you had been thrown off a large animal and all which probably addled your brain a bit.

In the days since, I have been trying to memorize your face, your sweet face just as it is. I now know more acutely how quickly you could be snatched from the safety of this moment, a false safety if ever there were one.

And the truth is that you are being snatched each and every moment from me. The moments are taken, seized without warrant. I should be used to it by now. In parenting we are forever straddling our own little heaven and hell at the same time; the heaven of the moments we want to preserve, the hell of having to will these moments away to cruel time; the hell of wanting the hard times to pass more quickly, the heaven of looking back on things when they felt so much simpler than the complicated present.

I will return to the horse and to you on the ground and I will pick you up thousands of times in my mind and my heart will reaffirm millions of beats more resoundingly that you are, indeed, my beloved and I will never stop fighting--time, distance, darkness, pain--to make sure you know that wild horses couldn't keep me away.

Love,

Mama

Brochure Copy - Walt Disney World Resort’s First Assisted Living Facility

“I came with my grandchildren and didn’t want to leave. No, I mean, literally. I couldn’t get back on the plane to Fort Wayne, so I figured, I’ll just put on some mouse ears and hang out here for awhile.” - Margaret, 68, patron to Walt Disney World (Summer 2013) and Golden Mousekevilla pioneer Maybe retiring to Mickey’s Clubhouse has been on your short list for years, or perhaps, like Margaret, you experienced the magic of Disney and just decided to stay...Whatever brings you here to the Golden Mousekevilla (GM), we hope you find this a supercallafragalistic setting in which to spend your golden years.

Why Disney? Our state-of-the art facilities combine first class service with Walt Disney theme park attractions. Within the sunny suburban setting of Orlando, GM offers enticing amenities for our most seasoned mouseketeers. Residents occupy their own private units, bedknobs and broomsticks, but enjoy the benefits of our public space designed by our Imagineers.

Our residential communities center around classic Disney film titles from the 1960s: Mary Poppins - for residents often tending to younger generations That Darn Cat! - our pet-loving community Babes in Toyland - a cheeky take on this winsome community of singles Absent-Minded Professor - for our residents demonstrating early signs of dementia Polyanna - for our cadre of idealists (coming 2018)

Each Neighborland community is tended to lovingly by our Landsculptors who coordinate shrubbery to each theme.

An Active Community Our neighborlands foster active lifestyles. Take a walk along the paths that lead to Main Street, U.S.A. Visit our main workout facility and try your senior strength on the Sword in the Stone, linger at our Pooh Corner resting areas, or train for the bobsled race in the Senior Olympics.*

Dining We cater to a cultured palette in our two main dining rooms, and our staff will accommodate your dietary needs. Just as our residents may have experienced on Disney Cruise Lines and in our WDW resorts, they are encouraged to wear their character apparel for chance sightings with Mickey, Goofy and Chip and Dale at all mealtimes.**

Medical Assistance The Doc McStuffins medical team are here to provide comprehensive care to our residents 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. On-call practitioners offer pharmaceutical support and our emergency response services are available to transport residents in our Aladdin ambulance to Florida Hospital. Alternatively, our team recognizes the importance of a spoonful of sugar to help that medicine go down.***

To schedule a tour of of Golden Mousekevilla for yourself or your favorite mousekesenior, cottage or townhouse, please call 1-800-RETIRE-DISNEY. Who says vacation has to end?

*as inspired by “Cool Runnings” (1993) - if Jamaica can have a bobsled team, so can Orlando! **Anna and Elsa are not anticipated at mealtimes, a fair warning to our youngest guests ***Imagineers plan to break ground on the Ten Thousand Leagues Under the Sea cemetery when GM reaches full residential occupancy. The graveyard outside of the Haunted Mansion at WDW will be used as our primary burial place in the meantime. However, plots at the Ten Thousand Leagues cemetery may be purchased to reserve your spot in advance.

*** The above is fiction. But fun to imagine, no?

Hanging out with Lena Dunham

It was so good to hang out with you today, Lena, and I would like to thank Terry Gross for facilitating the conversation and asking most of the questions I would have asked and some I wouldn't have thought of but was glad she asked you anyway, snorty laughter notwithstanding. I am still dancing around in the echo of what you said about how oversharing is a "gendered term." You said men who share about their experiences are deemed brave, but women are relegated to oversharing. I agree. I've sat at plenty of lunchtables with men talking perversion and misogyny and using expletives every other word and I got the impression that I was just supposed to hang. Whereas women asking for a tampon at anything above a whisper is considered gauche. I don't know if this is a battle we will ever win, dear Lena, the war of who gets permission to share true things, but that reminds me of something else illuminating you said. You explained how Hannah, the character you play in "Girls," is the one who feels charged with saying all the true things out loud, except she forgets that there are social constructs in place for a reason.

I feel this way. All the time.

I live in reaction to a very private family. I think my temperament is also pretty no bologna and having spent a decade in New England, I'm wicked blunt. But to my family, I'm all, "Okay, people, I'm calling everyone onto the floor who is still wearing a scrunchie from 1994" and my family is sort of, "Anybody care for some tea?"

So what I'm saying, Lena Dunham, is that I think we get each other. Also, did I say how cute your hair is looking on your Vogue cover? Ah, and by the way, congrazzles on the rave reviews of your book. Michiko Kakutani? Girrrrl.

Full disclosure, though: I couldn't get into "Girls" and it's not for the lack of trying on my part or a lack of talent for writing and acting on your part. It was just one of those salt-in-the-wounds reminders of how I sort of forgot to live in New York in my twenties and how I cannot fathom how many sexually transmitted diseases would be involved if life were really like that. That's where my brain goes. Everybody else is, Look how brave! Look how true! And I am tar-heeled paralyzed in the corner, pondering whether or not all those characters would be filling prescriptions for crabs.

Was that the sound of me oversharing again?

::presses publish because knows Lena Dunham won't mind::